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Geographic
Information Systems in Public Health: Proceedings of the Third National
Conference
EDITORS:
Robert
C. Williams, P.E., DEE
Assistant Surgeon General
Director, Division of Health Assessment & Consultation
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Atlanta GA
Max M. Howie, M.S.
Chief, Program Evaluation, Records & Information
Services Branch
Division of Health Assessment & Consultation
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Atlanta GA
Carolyn V. Lee, M.D., M.P.H., M.A.
Chief, Spatial Analysis and Information Dissemination
Section
Program Evaluation, Records & Information Services Branch
Division of Health Assessment & Consultation
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Atlanta GA
William D. Henriques, Ph.D., M.S.P.H.
GIS Coordinator, ATSDR
Spatial
Analysis and Information Dissemination Section
Program Evaluation, Records & Information Services Branch
Division of Health Assessment & Consultation
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Atlanta GA
FOREWORD
In
1996, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)
started on a journey to develop a national forum for technology
transfer; a meeting where new and innovative uses of GIS would be
encouraged, and frontiers for and challenges to the use of spatial
analysis would be debated and discussed. The realization of that
journey, and the tremendous efforts of many creative people, was
the Third National Conference on Geographic Information Systems
in Public Health, held August 18-20, 1998, in San Diego, California.
The
power and potential of GIS is limited only by your imagination.
Recent advances in the application of GIS technology have improved,
and will continue to revolutionize the spatial analysis of diseases,
environmental contamination, and social/demographic information.
This technology offers public health professionals unparalleled
insights as we enter the 21st century.
It
is this vision that enabled the Third National Conference on GIS
in Public Health. This shared understanding brought more than 500
conference attendees and presenters together with the pledge to
communicate - sharing advancements in the development
and/or implementation of GIS technology; cooperate
- networking to share GIS resources to resolve demanding and complex
public health issues at the local, state, tribal, and national levels;
and, collaborate - seeking means to better promote
research into and development of innovative applications of geospatial
data and GIS technology. The Conference served as a forum for public
health professionals from near and far to learn about computer mapping
technology and spatial data analysis in health protection and disease
mitigation.
The
Third National Conference on GIS in Public Health was sponsored
by ATSDR, with institutional cosponsors and partnerships. These
included California
State University at Fresno, the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), US
Census Bureau, US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA),
US Geological Survey (USGS),
the American Public Health Association (APHA),
the National Association of City and County Health Officials (NACCHO),
the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO),
the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA)
at Santa Barbara, the National Association of Local Boards of Health
(NALBOH),
and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
The local host for the Conference was San Diego State University
(SDSU).
In additional, two all-day GIS in Public Health workshops were provided
by NCGIA Santa Barbara. The workshops provided attendees with an
introduction to the use of GIS in the health sciences and an opportunity
to learn more about spatial statistical techniques used to analyze
health data.
The
unlimited future of GIS in Public Health is built on centuries of
public health surveillance activities, where health professionals
have relied on maps to locate and identify changes in patterns of
human disease. The GIS of today provides a relatively easy tool
for overlaying and analyzing disparate data sets that relate to
each other by location on the earth's surface. The growing availability
of health, demographic, and environmental databases containing local,
regional, national, and international information are propelling
major advances in the use of GIS and computer mapping with spatial
statistical analyses. The proceedings of this Conference challenge
us to make the most of these unprecedented opportunities and to
build on the legacy of the early practitioners. We started on our
journey to reveal a public health world within the grasp of GIS;
we are left with the mapping of a universe of GIS possibilities
for the future.
ATSDR
looks forward to an exciting future of enhanced public health and
environmental protection. Through the use of GIS and Internet technology
we can become more "connected" to one another than ever before,
enabling the sharing of information and ideas of those who work
closely with communities in protecting the health of our nation.
Please encourage others to learn more about the power of place
through the links and training
materials provided here on the GIS in Public Health web site.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
The
conference proceedings were developed under a contract with Eastern
Research Group (ERG), located in Lexington, MA. ATSDR would
like to thank Gail Schubert for her project management skills,
Nick Kanaracus for his desktop publishing and web page development
efforts, and Jan Power for the techincal editing of individual
manuscripts and communication with the authors. Dr.
Bill Henriques, ATSDR's GIS Coordinator was responsible
for the technical oversight of the 1998 GIS in Public Health conference,
the conference proceedings, and the overall development of these
web pages. Please feel free to contact Bill if you have any questions
or need some guidance.
DISCLAIMER:
Links to non-Federal organizations found at this site are provided
solely as a service to our users. These links do not constitute
an endorsement of these organizations or their programs by ATSDR
or the Federal Government, and none should be inferred. The ATSDR
is not responsible for the content of the individual organizational
webpages found at these links.
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